She had considered the situation very thoroughly, and she had no option but to assume that Tisamon wanted to be freed. Therefore if Tisamon desired to be free, yet was not free, it could only be because the pit-fighters’ cells held him so tightly he could not escape. In those circumstances she would become as much of a prisoner as he was.
So she would therefore rely on old-fashioned methods: the resources of her mother’s and father’s kin.
Tonight she intended assaulting the Emperor’s residence to get her father back.
Reaching the palace through the dark streets was challenge enough, for Capitas was an ordered city and only Wasps were allowed about after nightfall. It was a well-lit city, too, with gas lamps flaring at each street corner, so that the Emperor could look down after sunset and see himself at the heart of an almost geometric constellation.
She stalked the palace from the shadows, a tiny hunter approaching her monumental prey unseen. The nightly patrols and watchmen, with their pikes and lanterns, did not see her. She drew upon the Art inherent in her blood until she was right beside the palace walls.
There was too much light here, but she had no time to catch breath. The main door was impossible, but the Wasps erected their public buildings so that they rose in tiers, each succeeding step of the ziggurat narrower than the last. Somewhere up there, there must be an unguarded way in. She had to believe that.
What would Tisamon do in the same circumstances? And the answer was simple. He would just go, without all this deliberation. He would act.
She went skimming up the wall and on to the next tier in moments, her Art keeping her hands and feet close to the immaculately dressed stone, up the wall and over it, and down half that distance to the ground on the other side. It was a garden enclosed in a walled courtyard, she found: a low assemblage of shrubs and ferns that must be monstrously difficult to keep properly watered. There were doors at the far end of it and she skulked towards them.
Locked, of course, so she must still keep going upwards. Someone was bound to have left a balcony door open, a window unshuttered. She staved off the thought that the airborne Wasps would not necessarily lessen their security at a higher altitude, and that Tisamon’s cell would be deep below ground, and therefore that she was getting ever further away from him.
Tisamon would keep going, and so shall I.
She ascended two more tiers, staying well clear of the slit windows that might betray her presence. Each time, she found doors that were firmly sealed, or open doorways giving on to brightly lit rooms where Wasps were working: servants or clerks or scribes. Nowhere inside them was there a gap dark enough for her to slink in unseen.
She went up once more, covering each vertical as quickly as possible for fear that some late messenger might spot her clinging there. A glance backwards showed her the Emperor’s own view: the pinprick lights of his city spread like candles below her.
Anyone might have delusions of grandeur, seeing that.
She clambered up on to a low-walled balcony, feeling exhausted by the ascent, for constant use of her Art was draining her. Tynisa had never climbed so far and so fast. She crouched for a moment, crouched very low within the shadow of the wall, to catch her breath.
This must be some Wasp lord’s private view, she decided, allotted to some favourite of the Imperial Court. There was a carved stone table where perhaps the lord took his meals, and beyond it…
Beyond it was the open door. Not all the way open, but some careless servant had left it an inch ajar. Not locked, not barred, but ready for her – as though it had been left so at her order.
Quiet as quiet, she slipped into the darkened room beyond. She found herself alone there, in some antechamber hung with drapes. She crept on, one hand close to her rapier’s hilt.
‘Your boldness astounds me,’ said a dry voice, ‘but I presume that would be the Mantis blood.’
She could see no source for the voice, but her blade was in her hand instantly, impotently.
‘Once you have been marked by my kinden,’ continued the thin voice, ‘we can always sense you.’
‘Show yourself,’ she hissed.
She was abruptly no longer alone. There was a dark-robed shape in the room’s corner that she had somehow missed. She rounded on it with her blade drawn back to strike, but then darkness rose about her on every side, clawing at her and dragging her down. She felt the rapier fall helplessly from her grip, and then she too was falling, dropping further and futher and away.
Tynisa awoke.
There was a pain in her head, but not suggesting she had been struck, unless it was possible to sustain a blow from within the skull.
She opened her eyes. She saw only black and yellow.
She cursed, kicking herself to her feet from the cold stone floor, but there were chains clasped about her ankles and she stumbled back against the wall of… of a cell. She was in a cell with a single barred window high up, one so small that a Fly-kinden child would have difficulty squeezing through it even without the bars.
‘Well now,’ said a dry voice.
There were two Wasp-kinden guards in full armour, motionless and faceless behind the full helms of the Slave Corps. Between them stood a slight, robed figure, face hidden within a cowl. Pale, long-nailed hands were folded demurely before it.
Tynisa said nothing. Even to ask, Who are you? or What happened to me? would be to show weakness. She forced herself to remain calm. Her mind held no memory at all of what had befallen her.
‘We meet formally at last,’ said the robed figure. ‘I have previously had only my subordinates’ reports about you, and they have not done you justice. Tynisa Maker, I suppose they call you amongst the Beetle-kinden, but it’s clear to me that the name is only borrowed.’
‘You have me at quite an advantage,’ she replied, finally, and her voice was at least steady. She had no idea who this thin creature was, but there was no reason she could not win it over.
The fragile-looking man approached her, and she could now make out some of his pale face beneath the cowl. ‘You have shown yourself remarkably gifted in reaching Capitas still a free woman,’ he said. ‘Aside from a little push, initially, I have not needed to assist you in your journey at all.’
She felt something uneasy twist inside her. ‘A… push?’
‘Oh now, who do you think brought you here? Who gave you the idea? None but my servant, working according to my plan. Still, you have proved remarkably able. After this is done, perhaps I can find a use for you, if you survive.’
‘And for what possible purpose could you want me here?’ she asked, but her voice was less steady now that he was so close. There was something about him that frightened her, for no reason she could have named.
‘Insurance,’ he explained simply. ‘You see, your father is due to die for me tomorrow, and I thought that he might need motivating.’
She went for him then, clawing for his face, but the chains that restrained her brought her up short. As he caught one of her wrists in his thin-looking hand, she found his grip was far stronger than it had any right to be.
‘As it happens, our dear Tisamon seems more than happy to cast his life away. He considers it his destiny, and perhaps it is.’ The half-seen lips, bluish in that white face, twitched. ‘It is such a shame that my people never discovered the Mantis-kinden in the way our enemies did. They were the Moths’ private army of fanatics for centuries: superstitious, malleable, easily led for all their pride. And you, my dear Tynisa, have inherited all that from your poor doomed father. I barely had to extend myself to bring you here. You practically locked your own shackles.’
‘You’re going to kill Tisamon.’
‘No, no, he can see to that himself, being the expert after all. It seems likely though, that after all your travels you may not be needed after all.’ His eyes were red, she noticed. She could see them bloody and glistening under the shadow of his hood. He smiled at her, avuncular. ‘But still, why leave even that to chance? I shall keep you close to me, tomorrow, the slave of a slave, and if his heart turns before he steps on to the sand, then his daughter’s blood shall provide sufficient leverage to change his mind.’ He smiled. ‘It seems you will get to watch him die, after all.’